


Plain Sight

by Fyre



Category: Bad Education (UK TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:40:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one would ever say that Frank Grayson was a poof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, this could stand as part of my on-going series, but it can also work as a free-standing character piece :)

Frank Grayson was many things.

Ask anyone at school, and they’d tell ya.

Bastard. Prick. Arsehole. Git. Worse than that.

They’d never say anything to Frank’s face, course. 

No one had balls enough for that.

The one thing he’d never been called was gay.

No one knew that and he planned on keeping it that way. Frank Grayson wasn’t a fucking poof. He didn’t care if wanking over pictures of Beckham in FHM was bent. He wasn’t fucking gay and no one was going to say he was.

He’d shagged a couple of girls, made sure his mates knew about it, and that was enough.

He wasn’t going to be a poof. 

Didn’t matter if he got more turned on by blokes. Didn’t count unless he did something about it. Didn’t count as long as it was just a wank over a picture, and no one knew. Everyone wanked over some kind of kinky shit. Everyone. Don’t mean they’re into fucking ponies or some shit. Just cos he wanked over blokes didn’t make him a fucking poof.

Abbey Grove wasn’t exactly filled with talent, neither. Made it easier. The people there was ugly or fat or tossers who’d pay him their lunch money as soon as look at him. He called them poofs and laughed at them, because he wasn’t a fucking poof. He didn’t care if they were or not. Didn’t matter.

Everyone knew he was hard.

Everyone knew he was a solid bloke.

Everyone knew he liked a bit of skirt and nice tits.

Everyone knew, because he made damned sure they did.

There was only one queer he knew about in the school, and he avoided him. The pretty boy kind of guy who was into musicals and shit, with his perfect eyebrows and manicures and so fucking bent he could look round corners without turning. If anyone was going to call him out, it would be that one.

So he avoided him, didn’t even speak to him, and the only time they met was when he chucked macaroni cheese in the fag’s face. He laughed too long and too hard, while Glee screamed and thrashed, and then the bastard surprised him by getting up and kicking him in the fucking head! The fucking poof of Special K knocked him flat.

Course, he’d got up and tried to give the silly bastard a kicking before the teachers stopped them, and they tried to force Carmichael to apologise to him. Carmichael scowled at him, dark eyes blazing, and told him where to go. Frank was so fucking surprised that he didn’t even want to smack him.

Only got worse when he went and told Wickers he’d play for their team against the Toff school from up the road. The team were crap, proper crap. They even put the fucking crip on the field, with Wickers as useful as a fart in a bottle in goal. Not like they had much choice, since the only sub they had was Carmichael.

And that was when the stupid bastard surprised him again.

Fags were meant to hate football. It was one of the things that Frank knew he loved. He couldn’t be a fucking poof if he had a season ticket to West Ham. That’s what everyone believed. No poofs on the terraces or the field, and then fucking Carmichael took the fucking ball and almost won them the fucking game, like it was easy.

After the game, he’d turned the shower to ice cold, and scowled around. Let them think he was pissed that he wasn’t the one that scored all the goals. Let them think whatever they fucking wanted. He just didn’t want them to see how much Carmichael’s fucking ball skills had got to him.

Frank wanted to hate him, but hating meant thinking about him, and he didn’t want to do that neither.

So he went back to ignoring him and avoiding him, and it was simple as that.

It was all good until the night of the school election.

He’d only won, but they wouldn’t give it him. Pickwell’s face looked like a cat’s arse when she told him that they thought he’d set the wrong tone for the school. She’d also told him to get into the disco that had been set up in the hall, because she wasn’t having her victor slinking off like a kicked cat.

He hated fucking discos. Couldn’t dance, and didn’t want to anyway. 

So he hung around at the side, chugging cider that Kev had nicked from the shop, and glaring at anyone who looked at him funny. Special K were all in the middle of the floor, dancing like twats, and Frank didn’t look away quick enough. Carmichael was there, shirt half undone, and he was laughing, then did some kind of fucking hardcore spin.

Frank walked out of the hall right then.

The last thing he needed was someone noticing him making eyes at the fucking fag in form K.

He went home, drank the rest of the cider, and spent half the night with his hand wrapped around his cock. He tried to push Glee from his head, but it was bloody impossible. He pressed one fist against his bed and squeezed with his other hand, and just for a second, let himself think of him. Carmichael.

He scrubbed his hand afterwards, like it would get rid of the fact he’d wanked off thinking about someone he’d spoke to.

He had the whole summer to get over it.

Him and his mates went to Ibiza and there were hundreds of buff people there, and behind his sunnies, no one had to know where his eyes were going. They went out to the clubs, got wasted, and he even picked up a bird or two, just because his mates expected it.

When he got home, there weren’t much to do. Three days a week, he was flipping burgers and shit at the Burger King on the High Street, and the rest of the time, he was down the park to kick a ball around with mates or pissing about near the shopping centre, waiting to get paid so he could get a bottle.

Got harder to keep distracted when there was sod all to do.

He tried looking at lads’ magazines, and tried getting himself off to the girls and their tits, but his brain was a fucking traitor, and every time he tried, he remembered the half-buttoned shirt, the smooth, brown skin underneath, and the flash of Carmichael’s teeth when he laughed.

By the time school started up again, he was even more pissed off than usual.

Didn’t help that Pickwell got it into her head that the school should do a swimming gala again. 

Frank refused point fucking blank to be involved. Sport weren’t his thing, unless it was the footie, and he wasn’t fucking about in speedoes just to make her look good. She was as scary as hell sometimes, but there was some stuff even she couldn’t make him do.

He stayed with his mates in the gallery, and laughed at the crap that the teams were doing. Gulliver’s class was made of complete divs, sitting about and singing. Easy target, and then he saw the Chub from Special K standing by the poolside.

The last year, he’d had an even easier target there.

But this year, his eyes moved sideways and fucking hell, it had to be him, didn’t it? Fucking Carmichael was standing right there in just a pair of speedoes that hid sod all. Grayson clenched his hand around the railing, and forced his glare back.

Even yelling down “Chicken dipper” didn’t help, so after Chub and Dickers won their stupid dive, he dragged his mates down to the changing rooms. He needed to do something that would give him a laugh and stop him thinking about long, lean legs and smooth shoulders. 

Wickers was showering, all puffed up like someone had smacked him in the face. Anyone seeing that would have been turned off men for life, and it was too fucking easy to nick his stuff and leave him outside, bare arse to the world.

It almost worked an’ all. 

The thought of Wickers’ bare arse was enough to stop him thinking about anything to do with naked men, and for the first time in weeks, he didn’t wake up with a stiffie.

Never lasted, though.

All it took was passing Carmichael in the hall once. He used some kind of aftershave, Frank noticed, then felt like a tit for noticing or even caring.

Christ, it was like he was a fucking girl.

He avoided the cafeteria after that, and if he was going to class, he’d wait until the halls were clear to make sure they didn’t run into each other again. Not that Carmichael even gave a shit if he was there or not. He just stayed out of the fucking way, and didn’t go to any of the school shows or anything.

It stayed that way, simple, until they called the school to an assembly.

Pickwell was dead.

Frank felt sick down to his balls.

She was a hard bitch, but she was his teacher, and she was the only fucking teacher in the school with the balls to call him on his shit. He’d even got a C in her class once, for Christ’s sake, and she’d told him he did all right.

It was all shit.

Everyone was upset, but he felt like he was the only one who needed to fucking cry because he missed her, and there wasn’t a fucking person he knew he could tell. Was it cos he was a stupid fucking poof after all? Or was it just normal when the one person who gave half a shit about you was gone? 

Especially when she’d topped herself and that fucking video made him think his fucking personality had shoved her on her way.

He didn’t know what the fuck he was meant to do.

So he hit people, broke things, and finally, worst came to worst.

He cried on Wickers the Dick’s shoulder like a pussy.

He hated it, feeling like he was a fucking wimp. He wasn’t meant to cry. His dad had taught him that when he was a titch. No crying, because crying was for pussies and poofs and not a proper bloke. His dad had always told Frank everything that was wrong in the world, and now, he knew if his dad saw him, he’d be fucking disgusted.

So he tried to be like his dad, like it would help.

He got off on blokes, and even if no one saw it, he cried like a fucking child when they replaced Pickwell with some psychotic little goblin witch. He could still scare Wickers, but even that wasn’t much fun anymore.

His mates never asked what was wrong.

They wouldn’t. 

Because saying something was wrong was being a pussy, and Frank fucking Grayson was not a fucking pussy.

It was like he was two people, the Frank Grayson everyone saw, and the Frank Grayson who he kept locked away, someone his dad would batter the shit out of, someone who would get laughed at and kicked over. That Frank Grayson was the one he’d been fighting against his whole life. 

From the minute he started at Abbey Grove, he’d decided he weren’t going to be the Frank who kept getting kicked no more. He was the one who’d do the kicking. Big bad Grayson, terror of the fucking playground. 

And it worked. 

There wasn’t a person in the school who’d even try to take him, even if he was shorter than half of them all now. They forgot about that because he’d made ‘em all think he would and could take every sodding one of them.

The only place it didn’t work was at home.

Him and his dad never got along. His dad was a cunt, he could see that now. His dad liked things done his way or not at all, and the more Frank saw of his dad, sitting around all night after work, yelling at his mum, sometimes even trying to thump her, he hated the bastard.

He put up with it, because his mum didn’t want to leave, but he was getting sick and fucking tired of his old man and his rules. He watched them fighting again. Wasn’t even fighting. It was his dad getting up, hand raised, and his mum ducking back.

Frank got between them, as fucking usual.

“You lookin’ at?” His dad was swaying already. Not even six o’clock and he was plastered.

Frank looked back at him. “Sit down, dad,” he said. “You’re wasted.”

His dad snorted. “You don’t even have a fucking girlfriend,” he said. “How the hell are you meant to know how to control a woman?”

Frank wanted to smack him in his gob. The people he picked on were big and ugly enough to fight back. His mum wasn’t one of them. And Frank had standards. He never hit people unless he had to, and he never, ever hit a fucking girl.

His dad, he realised, was a dick and he was wrong about so many fucking things.

The next day, Frank decided to stick it to his old man. 

It was coming up on Christmas, and the school did a Secret Santa every year, so he went and bought two West Ham tickets for the first big game after Christmas. He took them home and sat and stared at them like he was holding a loaded gun.

One for him.

One for Carmichael.

Christ, he didn’t even know if the wanker would go with him, once he found out.

Frank ran a hand over his face. 

What was the worst that could happen?

Well, the poof could turn him down, laugh in his face, and out him to the whole fucking school. And then his dad could hear about it and beat the seven shades of shit out of him for not just being a poof but for fancying someone black.

The other choice was tearing the fucking ticket up and staying like it was now: shit.

Frank shoved the ticket in an envelope and put Carmichael’s name on it.

He was in to school early for him, and shoved it in the Secret Santa sack for Form K in the Jani’s cupboard. It was one of the unwritten rules of Abbey Grove. You could nick any shit from the Jani’s cupboard, except the Secret Santa stuff. No one knew when it had started, but no one ever did it.

It was there a week before the gifts were given out, and that’s when he heard a whisper around the school that Special K were the class what were doing the school play, but they was letting anyone audition. He laughed with his mates, cos who would want to be in a play with those losers? But his mind was spinning. 

He never had a reason to talk to any of them.

Now, he could.

And it was a play.

Carmichael fucking loved plays. 

That was one of the only thinks Frank knew about him. He liked plays and he liked football and he liked singing and dancing and computer games and acting and Frank stopped himself short. Looked like he knew a hell of a lot more about Carmichael than he’d even noticed.

If he was ever going to have a chance to speak to the twat in person, he could do it if he joined in the play.

For the first time in his life, he went to the library and asked for a play.

The librarian peered at him through her specs. “What kind of play?”

Shit! What kind of plays were there?

“Some romantic shit,” he heard himself.

Christ, what kind of nonce did he want to become?

She returned minutes later and put a book down on the desk in front of him. 

Romeo and Juliet.

Even he’d heard of that.

The English teacher banged on about it enough.

He picked it up, staring at it.

Well, if he was going to go and join a fucking play just be around Carmichael, then why not go all the fucking way and use some of the most famous romantic shit in the English language? Maybe Carmichael would take the hint and he wouldn’t have to ask him to go to the football. Or maybe he’d be able to take enough of a hint from the way Carmichael behaved around him to know not to ask.

Christ, asking out a poof was much trickier than getting a bird.

Still, he was going to fucking do it.

Maybe there were two sides to him, but both of them were randy as fuck, and neither of them wanted to be chicken. He shoved the book in his blazer pocket and stalked out of the library to find somewhere private to practise.


End file.
